Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this legislation, which has been tabled by my colleague, Deputy Mairéad Farrell, and me on behalf of the Sinn Féin Party. Recent months have shone a light on the revolving door that exists between private interests and government, between corporate lobbyists and the corridors of power. We have been saying that this was happening for far too long. The light has shown us that we need stronger regulations and to close the revolving door between government and vested interests.

We discussed at length inside and outside the House the fact that the Tánaiste, who was the then Taoiseach, divulged commercially sensitive and confidential information to the head of a lobby group that, as a matter of Government policy, had been excluded from contract negotiations. The president of that group just happened to be the Tánaiste's friend. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, refused as part of the Government to release all of the communications despite him, the Tánaiste, the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health saying that they would be made available.

The revolving door between government and vested interests has a corrosive effect on government. It undermines public trust and reveals a system where private interests have a shortcut to the top of the table while the rest of the public have to wait in the queue. We have seen poachers turning gamekeepers. In the past three months, a Minister of State has become a lobbyist and a lobbyist has become a member of the commission that regulates lobbying. One could simply not make it up, but the Minister did because he is the person who proposed Ms Geraldine Feeney to take on that role. When the Minister for Finance sits down with the banking sector, which he is supposed to regulate, he looks across the table and sees a former Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Mr. Brian Hayes, his party colleague. In September, another Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Mr. Michael D'Arcy, became CEO of a private lobbying firm three months after he left the Department. The lobbying group - the Irish Association of Investment Managers, IAIM - lobbied him while he was Minister of State to extend generous tax breaks that reduced the tax liability of multinational executives by hundreds of thousands of euro per year. Incidentally, that tax break was extended until the end of 2020 while he was in the Department.

Mr. D'Arcy's appointment as CEO has shown the weaknesses in how we regulate the relationship between government and corporate lobbyists. According to the rules laid out in the 2015 Act, it is regulated by SIPO. Under that legislation, a former Minister, special adviser or senior civil servant should cool off for at least a year after leaving office before taking up a role to lobby the Government. However, the regulations are not working. Despite Mr. D'Arcy breaking them by becoming the CEO of the IAIM only three months after leaving office, SIPO has no power to investigate or sanction him. Was this an oversight or a loophole? Absolutely not, because SIPO wrote to the Government in 2016 asking it to close this loophole and give SIPO the power to investigate and sanction people in such cases. In 2019, SIPO did so again, but the Fine Gael Government ignored every single one of the 22 recommendations that SIPO made in 2016 and 2019. Those recommendations would have enhanced transparency and accountability. In ignoring them, that Government allowed Mr. D'Arcy to breach the regulations without any fear of consequence because that is the Fine Gael way. That is the revolving door between government and vested interests. That is what we in Sinn Féin, through this legislation, aim to close down.

The Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, believes he needs more time.

We need another round of consultations. We need to listen to what SIPO has told us for four years. The Department reviewed it twice, under a different Minister. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, said that there was nothing to see here and that we should not implement any of its recommendations. We have a different view.

As I said, this has a corrosive effect on the Government. For far too long bankers, the insurance industry and other vested interests have had a grip on the Government that the ordinary public could never have. This Bill should not be delayed; its implementation is overdue. We need to give the power to SIPO to act where it needs to act.

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